Cain said his concerns about Perry include "being soft on the border, issues relative to tuition for children of illegal aliens." As governor, Perry supported legislation offering in-state college tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, which has become a flash point in the campaign. "And I haven’t totally gone through all of his positions, but a lot of positions I have questions with," Cain said.

Preface: I am a 25-35 year-old white male. I've cast my vote for a GOP candidate in any major state or national election, but I consider myself a "conservative-libertarian," whatever that is.

Question: When these candidates are debating benefits for "children of illegal immigrants," are they talking about children born here (i.e., citizens)? And are they talking about benefits exclusively dedicated to individuals so situated, or are they objecting to some citizens (the children of illegal immigrant ones) enjoying the same benefits that children of citizens or legal immigrants enjoy?

I'm not a shill or a troll. These are honest questions. No matter the answer, there's no way I'd vote for Obama (didn't last time!). But I keep reading these articles and blog posts about "children of illegal immigrants" and it feels like there is a conspicuous omission. We're talking about American children. Citizens. It doesn't matter where their parents came from or what their parents did. Hell, if we want to have a conversation about deporting the parents let's have the conversation. But the kids? The born-here, natural-born, could-be-President, of-this-soil "children of immigrants?" Why are we fighting about them? Aren't we all "children of immigrants?"

This is a man who doesn't understand or believe in the 1st Amendment (see the notorious Fox News interview).

This is a man whose website includes this BS on foreign policy: "Because we are such a free and prosperous people, we are the envy of the world. Many regimes seek to destroy us because they are threatened by our ideals, and they resent our prosperity."

BTW, is there no better evidence of the media's bias than their explosive love for Perry and Cain? Who better to thrust forward as "favorites" for the GOP nomination than another twangin' governor from Texas and a Muslim hating CEO? Even with Obama polling as low as he is, these are two guys that could deliver him a victory. And the media can't stop wetting their pants over them!

Chanie, "children of illegal immigrants" in this context means illegal immigrants. They were brought here by their parents illegally. Any children of illegal immigrants born in this country are citizens and would receive in-state tuition anywhere.

I think the question on immigration boils down to this: (1) do you want to import your underclass as slaves, (2) do you want to have your underclass import itself, or (3) do you want to have a native underclass?

Option One is obviously out because it is wholly morally untenable and also unconstitutional.

Options Two and Three both have attractive and unattractive features.

I can understand why a person, such as Mickey Kaus, wants to go with Option Three but provide ample opportunities for people to leave the underclass if, as Bill Clinton would put it, they work hard and follow the rules. Option Three has the added benefit of putting upward pressure on wages for poor people.

Option Two brings a continuous trickle of new people into the workforce who are hardworking and innovative. Perhaps best, they are happily poor, because being poor in the United States is totally and completely awesome compared to being poor in Nicaragua. As a free trader, I tend to lean toward this option, but I am a bit torn.

At any rate, as Mickey Kaus says, and nothing is truer, the only serious way to stem immigration is to build the Great Wall of the United States. (He doesn't call it the Great Wall; that's my term.)

As far as Herman Cain, it's great that he's having his moment, as Bachmann had hers. But he won't get the nomination, nor should he. Show us that you can win a statewide race, or at least be a player of some kind in Congress. Then run for president.

7 - damn. lost comment. To sum: Eisenhower, to name only the most recent example, had nothing but war and Columbia (a sinecure) on his resume. And Cain probably controlled more dollars, if fewer lives, than Ike.

And - Why? So that you remember, next time a Cain or Palin gets shanked on TV, what sorts they are who wield the shiv.

Come on, Nichevo. The corporation Eisenhower controlled was worth more nominal dollars in the 1940s, not to mention real dollars. Moreover, a military is a government bureaucracy as complex as any state government and military leaders have been civil government leaders since the advent of government.

I don't disparage Cain. He is a great speaker, a great leader, and a great man. But he does not have the experience required to be an effective president.

I didn't get that from any media figure, by the way. It is my own conclusion.

Costing wildly off the top of my head, the Manhattan Project, a significant fraction (25%? I speak without googling) of the all-up cost of WWII, was only a bil or two, IIRC. And Ike did not have the ENTIRE US Armed Forces, of course.

...Sorry, you know what it was? I got confused by somebody's Driving Miss Daisy thing with his father and was thinking of Coca-Cola as Cain's gig, not the pizza chain (which I've never seen). Sure, no doubt the Overlord ground forces crapped bigger than Godfather's Pizza.

But even so the comparison is not laughable. Cain also was a Fed bigwig, no? And something in IT? I'd say his skillsets are well focused for today. (One thing Palin could supply in spades, which I think you discount, is real cognitive strength in energy policy, too.)

One useful exercise when judging candidates, I think, is to skip electability, just arguendo, and consider how they'd actually do in the job.

For instance, look at Obama. Never mind rope-a-doping McCain and the media tonguebaths, put him in a room with his actual future peers.

A Putin or Hu or Abdullah can call him "nigger" or "monkey" or "slave" or "punk-ass bitch" or "puling moronic rube" all day, literally or in effect, or just treat him that way, and nobody will save him. Nobody has, yet, eh? Rolled again and again.

(Not that he surrounds himself with anything but jackals, to do any saving. I used to say GWB's flaw was 'worst comms ever' - Obama's got all the worst staff imaginable. It's as if he were allergic to competence.)

Palin might produce a hairball over some pissant question like her reading lists, but let Vlad the Inhaler tell her that he thinks he'll take Eastern Europe back, I have confidence she can formulate a convincing "No."

Cain may be a little hasty but I don't see him kicking friends and kissing enemies in MENA and elsewhere, bowing to Saudis and giving iPods (of himself!!!) to the Brits.

Anybody who couldn't see that Obama was shit should have their franchise taken away. If he can run and not be laughed out of the country, anyone can.

Remember also that Obama is not only stupid and weak, but also evil. Even if Palin or Cain or the others have flaws in the stupid or weak category, none are visibly evil except Ron Paul.

To run against Obama, the GOP is not going to nominate someone who's lost the only election he's ever run in. Mr. Cain, no dummy, understands this.

Mr. Cain expects that he can do a very large practical favor for Gov. Romney every time he digs an elbow into Gov. Perry's ribs. Mr. Cain understands that he may indeed become instrumental in helping Romney nail down the nomination.

The odds favor a Romney/Cain ticket right now. But I don't count out Gov. Perry, and I'm not sure that another credible candidate — someone more credible than Mr. Cain — won't enter the race during the coming month, especially if Gov. Perry doesn't way outperform the now-lowered expectations for his next debate appearance.

@ Nichevo: You do Mr. Cain no favors by suggesting that his experience is more impressive than Eisenhower's.

No, Ike did not command "the ENTIRE US Armed Forces." Rather, from January 1944 through the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945, Eisenhower served in a dual role as Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force and Commanding General, European Theater of Operations. That is, in the war in which the American strategy was "Europe First" and to which America devoted its greatest efforts, Eisenhower commanded every Allied soldier, sailor, and airman from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the ANZACs, the Free French, the Poles, etc. -- basically, everyone fighting the Germans who wasn't wearing a cap with a red star on it.

The equivalent would perhaps be if Mr. Cain had commanded the entire provision of food services to the Western Hemisphere for several years.

I don't think running a moderately successful pizza chain counts as saving the world, but Ike is one of the very few people in all of history who could make that claim with a straight face.

In fairness to Perry, only 1% of those eligible qualified for the in-state tuition, but, if he can't articulate a valid defense of his positions, he won't be much good when the slime machine gets going for real.

Herman, OTOH, seems to forget the 11th Commandment and needs to remember who the real enemy is.

If Dustin is right, Herman's going to be in for a rude awakening.

rcocean said...

I don't blame Cain. Perry is really another Bush - only worse.

But Cain doesn't have to worry. Perry would choose Christie, Daniels, Rubio or Jeb Bush before Cain.

Hardly. Rove hasn't been talking up Perry on Fox.

And Perry has better sense than to pick Daniels. The running mate has to be a fighter and Daniels hasn't got the stomach or the guts for it.

Professor Chaos said... "Chanie, "children of illegal immigrants" in this context means illegal immigrants. They were brought here by their parents illegally. Any children of illegal immigrants born in this country are citizens and would receive in-state tuition anywhere."

That has not been determined, only assumed by a treasonous, cowardly Congress. They are not "subject to the jurisdiction of the US", they are subject to the jurisdiction of their parents home country. SCOTUS needs to rule on this issue.

I keep reading these articles and blog posts about "children of illegal immigrants" and it feels like there is a conspicuous omission. We're talking about American children. Citizens.

No we are not. We are talking about kids whose parents brought them here when they (the kids) were young. These kids were not born in the US. The children are also illegal immigrants, although the defense is that they did not have a choice about coming here. That may be true, but that does not mean they and their parents should get in-state tuition.

What foreign policy experience did Reagan have before taking office? Or JFK, Truman, etc.?

As for Cain having no government experience, for goodness sakes, please, isn't it about time? Well, he was on the board of the Kansas City Fed and its chairman! Not bad for the son of a chauffeur. What does the guy need? A log cabin?

Has anyone seen Perry speak lately? It's been very soft and beta male. He's very halting in his speech patterns. This is what happened to W as well. Go back and watch interviews with him in the 90s - he was in command, he was sharp, he spoke in complete sentences. Somewhere along the way, he realized that EVERY SINGLE word coming out of his mouth was being parsed. I think the same thing has happened to Perry.

Cain has got it right. Perry was a Democrat until 1990 and actually chaired the Gore campaign in Texas in '89, which is even more embarrassing than what may or may not have been painted on a rock in '84.

what could Perry have done, that measure for tuition passed 189-4, it was veto proof.

and by the way how many students do you think are affected. You have to be in the top 10% of your class in state too get into Texas and A&M. I've seen the figure at less than 100 kids affected by this, and it seems to me we want those 100 kids to be citizens.

Perry's policies as the governor of a border state about the education of illegal immigrant children residing in his state should not be automatically conflated with whatever Perry's policies about illegal immigration and border control might be as POTUS. The perspectives of those two offices --and the issues-- are vastly different. Perry needs to be pinned down on this. If he wants to win, he should be wanting to clarify it himself.

Cain's showing his inexperience in campaigning. Shooting-from-the-lip is a virtue in a talk show host but poisonous in a national candidate. I'm trying to resist pointing at this sort of thing as an example that feeds into my suspicion of CEO-candidates for the presidency - part of the reason why I voted for Gore in 2000.

She abandoned her post as governor of Alaska to cash in on lectures and TV.

Where is the substantiation of this? She resigned being governor of alaska because she and her office were going to endure an utter onslaught of law suits that would have rendered her ineffective and possibly penniless in fighting them. All of the documents that were released that the leftards combed through with a fine tooth comb came up with NOTHING!!! Yet Frum can sit in his little office and hack out that Sarah is nothing more than a petty highschool alpha female mean girl? Really? This is the culmination of his political assessments?

Cain is lying. Thus there are 3 reasons he disqualifies for US President:(1) dishonest(2) played the race card on Perry (not post-racial, no better than Jesse Jackson Jr)(3) black man (mentally and spiritually unable to achieve a post-racial identity).

We don't know that. However ill-considered, it may be purely a political gambit. As pointed out, Cain is competing with Perry for the same bloc of voters. It may be nothing more than an effort to knock Perry out.

If Romney gets the nomination I say he'd be smart to select Cain for the VP slot, for several reasons. One, it may help inoculate against the race card we know Obama's campaign will play. Two, it will be a reach-out to tea partiers. Three, together they can present a solid front of the candidacy of successful bussnessmen. And there are other reasons too, reasons of geography and demographics.

Cain doesn't seem likely either as a prez or VP. He has zero political experience but wants to start at the top. As a VP candidate, Cain is too old, his health is an issue, he has no experience.

If people are thinking that Cain will grab a lot of votes because he is black, it seems one election too late for that to happen. Cain is very unlikely to even get many black votes because blacks vote as a block for the dems.

If the GOP is going to do racial pandering, better to focus on Hispanics (maybe Rubio will change his mind).

Having said all that, if Cain is the GOP nominee, I will enthusiastically vote for him. He has the right political philosophy and is a smart guy who will probably figure it out on the fly.